Deutsche Bank’s recent note on China Real Estate

“In recent weeks, the number of phone calls received by an author of this report from China-based property agents has increased several fold, indicating a significant rise in the urgency for developers to raise cash from selling properties. A property consultant told us that he recently received requests to help raise RMB10bn for cash-strapped small and medium-sized property developers – this amount is a huge multiple of what he is used to dealing with. In the offshore market, where many Chinese developers seek foreign currency funding due to lack of access to domestic funds (the domestic stock, bond and trust loan markets are closed to them due to policy tightening, and banks are also very stringent), their USD bond yields have surged to 20-25% in past weeks from around 10% before August. This means that even the offshore markets are now largely closed to Chinese developers (see Figure 4).

All these suggest that many developers are now under greater pressure to sell their properties at a bigger discount in order to avoid a liquidity crisis. An emerging consensus from potential buyers and some developers is that a 10% drop in prices in the coming two quarters would be justified.

A further decline in physical property prices will likely reduce the incentive for developers to start new projects, and thus implying a deceleration in real estate FAI. Note that real estate FAI by developers account for about 16% of total FAI, and about 25% of the demand for steel, coking coal, and cement.

Readers may ask why we are not projecting a 30% drop in property prices. Those who understand China’s political economy should know that a 15% decline in average property prices in 35 cities within a few months must be accompanied by a range of economic and social consequences. These will include a sharp decline in real estate transactions, a visible deceleration in real estate investments, rising unemployment in the property construction and agency sectors, a further decline in construction material prices, demand destruction due to inventory destocking, and finally a worrying decline in GDP growth and the resulting concern of social stability. In other words, the government will most likely not tolerate a 30% drop, and probably not even 15% in our view. We expect real estate policies will likely be relaxed way before a 30% price decline is observed.”